"When we had our gas explosion in Salford, the plans developed for us by David Leigh and the Commercial Initiatives team provided us with a strong foundation to deal with the ensuing crisis.

The Incident Management Plan itself ensured that we were able to focus on the key issues during the immediate aftermath of the incident thus avoiding "headless chicken syndrome". Our response was widely praised by other bodies including the Police and statutory authorities. Without the plan, and perhaps even more importantly, the rigorous scenario testing of the plan we had undertaken with David and his team our response would have been far less professional. We were able to move seamlessly from the Incident Management phase to wider business recovery as a result of looking beyond the initial incident during our planning and scenario testing exercises. The incident attracted widespread media coverage both locally and nationally and again the work we had done with David and the team on media relations enabled us to respond effectively to that interest and manage any difficult reputational issues.

Although we would prefer that they didn't, disasters and crises do happen and thanks to the work we had done with Commercial Initiatives we were able to deal with this major incident effectively and professionally."

"We have used Commercial Initiatives several times now to run a test of our business continuity plan, using real life scenarios. The exercises have always been valuable, helping us to review and improve our plans through David Leigh and the Commercial Initiatives team completing a Business Impact Analysis for us. Commercial Initiatives have also developed our departmental recovery team plans. We have really learnt from the expertise of David and his team. Staff particularly participating in the exercise say they have come away with a very practical and enjoyable experience of business continuity."